smears. I walked along the edge of the boundary until I reached the gate, then pushed it open enough for me to squeeze through, but not past the point where the hinges creaked. The lawn was the colour of emeralds, soft and mown into stripes by a gardener who came on a Wednesday afternoon and peed in the bushes unaware I was watching. The grass ran from the gate up to the house and was bordered by lush flowerbeds which held plants of every colour and insects that flitted busily between flower heads. I’d looked some of them up in a book of Dad’s – The Comprehensive Guide to the Flora and Fauna of Cornwall and Devon – and learnt lots of their names by heart. Cordyline, sea pinks, red and lilac poppies, phormium, flowering sea kale, and others I couldn’t remember grew amongst copses of bamboo and blue hydrangea. There were ornamental ferns which should have been in the jungle and agapanthus and towering gunnera with giant leaves straight out of Alice in Wonderland.
When I reached the terrace I stopped and looked up at the house. It wrapped itself around me like a warm blanket. The air crackled with electricity and the cry of curlews rang in my ears as I drank in its salt-stained white and the soft slips of cloud moving like ghosts across ginormous windows. According to Dad it was something called ‘Art Deco’, built between the Wars by the heir to an enormous tobacco fortune as a gift for his American wife who’d taken a shine to Cornwall. It was hard to believe that an actual American once lived in St Just. I imagined her walking across this very same terrace, talking American, dressed in pressed white slacks with a silver cigarette case, the spit of Lauren Bacall.
Most of the terrace was taken up by the glorious swimming pool. Rectangular, with semi-circular steps at one end, it was lined with mosaic tiles as black as coal. I walked to the edge of it and trod on my plimsolls to take them off. I heard my mother’s voice lecturing me.
Don’t break the backs. Undo the laces. No money for more.
The paving stones were warm underfoot. I placed my bag beside my shoes and stared down at the pool. The surface was still. Not even a ripple. It shone like a sheet of black mirror, reflecting the sky like the windows that punctured the house. I bent to put my finger to it and heard the echo of his voice. Saw him smile at me. Saw the glint in his eye. Wavelets spread outwards from my touch and faded to nothing but a shift of light on the disturbed water.
One of her scarves was draped over the sun lounger nearest me. I reached for it. The silk was soft in my fingers. I brought it up to my face and breathed in. It smelt of her perfume, rich and thick, with a hint of coconut suntan oil beneath. I wrapped the scarf around my neck as I’d seen her do a hundred times.
I’d been watching the house on and off since the Davenports bought it two years earlier from an elderly couple who moved to Spain. I don’t know exactly why I first walked up to the point to see the house. Up until that moment I’d avoided it. I’d found the thought of going back to the place too painful. Too much of a reminder of what I’d lost when my father died. But something made me curious. Maybe it was the rumours which had spread through St Just like wildfire. A famous writer. His glamorous wife. Londoners bringing their fancy ways to West Penwith. Or perhaps it was hearing the house in overheard conversations, each mention of it bringing a vibrant memory back to me. But whatever the reason for that first visit, I knew within moments it wouldn’t be the last. As soon as the house loomed into view it was like a spell had been cast. The connection was undeniable. And then, when I began to watch them – Mr and Mrs Davenport – the connection deepened. As I became increasingly sucked into their lives, going to the house became a heady mix of both memory of my father and dreamy escapism.
I knew their routine well. They only ever came on weekends, arriving late afternoon on a Friday and leaving before noon on the Monday. On as many Fridays as I could manage I’d walk to the point and wait, binoculars primed, praying for the roar of the Jaguar as it careened down the lane. They didn’t always appear. There was no way of knowing. Even though Mum went in every week – whether they were coming or not – they never thought to tell her which weekends they’d be there. On the days when they didn’t appear I’d feel so let down it physically hurt, deflated by disappointment. It was following one of these no-shows that I braved creeping into the garden, just like I’d done with my dad all those years before.
Adrenalin coursed through me as I walked across the lawn towards the house. I didn’t make it all the way to the terrace before nerves got the better of me and I turned and hared out of the gate to the safety of the footpath. As I paused to catch my breath, my whole body trembled and a bout of excited laughter rippled through me. The thrill of it became an addiction, and while the other kids at school sniffed glue or drank snakebite and black to get their kicks, I walked up to The Cliff House, either to watch the Davenports or explore, depending on the mood which took me.
I stood in front of the window and cupped my hands around my eyes, peering in to double-check it was empty. The sitting room was as spotless as always, not a magazine or an ornament or a picture frame out of place. I thought of my mother dusting and polishing, arranging everything just so, wanting it to be perfect for when they arrived. I felt for the key with the green tag in my pocket and pushed it into the lock. I held my breath as I turned it. There was a loud click. I opened the door and paused to listen. The only sound was the hum of the enormous fridge in the kitchen so I stepped inside and pulled the door closed behind me.
The inside of the house was what I imagined an art gallery would look like. It was cool and quiet with paintings on white walls, unusual pottery dotted about, and a large hunk of grey stone in one corner which was carved into a vague human form. The paintings were oversized canvases with no frames or glass, splashes of colour daubed over them as if someone had poured the paint from a tin instead of brushing it. All were signed in the corner with the name Etienne scrawled in an extravagant blue flourish. Truth be told, I didn’t think they were that good, but what did I know? There was no way people like the Davenports would put anything on their walls that wasn’t the very best. I preferred the photographs, black-and-white close-ups of body parts made to look like the landscape. A woman’s breast turned into a hill. A tummy button filled with water to resemble a pool in the desert.
My feet made a soft padding sound as I crossed the room. The polished floorboards shone as if coated with syrup. I walked through the door leading into the kitchen where a central worktop held a neat stack of recipe books, the titles of which I now knew by heart – Robert Carrier, Elizabeth David, The F Plan, The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet – and a pepper mill which was at least a foot tall and the same shade of red as my mother’s movie-star lipstick. I struck a pose against the worktop, flicked back my hair, swished my dress.
‘Darling?’ My voice fractured the stillness. ‘Yes, my love? Oh, darling, do bring me a Martini. Stirred, if you will. Of course, my love. I’ll fetch you one now. Shall I put one of those green things in it, too? I know how you love them so.’
I gave a trill, mimicking the laugh I was sure she’d have.
‘Darling, you’re right. I do love them. And, oh, goodness me, isn’t it hot today? Baking hot. Thank goodness we have the swimming pool. What on earth would we do if we didn’t? We’d boil, darling. We’d absolutely boil.’
He smiled.
My stomach tightened as he reached out for my hand, then lifted it to his mouth and pressed his lips against my skin.
I smiled and went to the cupboard for a glass, which I filled from the tap. I turned the tap off and the last drips fell against the stainless steel sink with the beat of a slowing clock. As I drank I held my little finger up in a delicate salute. I also took the tiniest sips because people like the Davenports never gulped their water. After I’d rinsed the glass and dried it on my dress, I returned it to the cupboard before walking back through the sitting room and out onto the terrace, where the heat seemed to have intensified.
I walked like a model on a catwalk, swinging my hips from side to side, one foot in front of the other, chin held high. Then I untied the silk scarf and pulled it away from my neck, enjoying the way it caressed my skin. I laid it over the sun lounger exactly as I had found it, watching for a moment as a slight wind ruffled the material and made it dance. I walked over to the swimming pool steps and looked into the water.